Joys of Parenthood

When my kids grow up, I’m going to their house to break their stuff, eat all their food, make a huge mess, say I’m bored and then just leave, said the post on my Facebook page this week.

Don’t forget to squabble and bicker, talk all the way through their favourite tv programmes and tell them their dinner is disgusting, particularly if they’ve laboured over it for most of the day.

If you really wanted payback, you could take it a step further and sidle up for a cuddle, then discreetly wipe your snotty nose on their sleeve. Or, flip, why not smear sh*t all over the bathroom walls too. (Is it just me or do other parents discover this?)

But now I’m just getting carried away.

For those of you who are child-free, this wasn’t an intentional form of verbal contraception. Look at it this way, when you share a home with little ones, you never need an alarm clock. Oh and the honesty! You really know where you stand with them on a day-to-day basis. If you p*ss them off, you’re de-friended just like that. And then when they want something, it’s all back on. So you can throw predictability in there too.

You get better at handling public embarrassment – like Master Four booming out at kindy pick-up in front of all the other parents that I – oh wait, I’m not going to embarrass myself further by re-living that one. It was all lies anyway.

He seems to have mastered the art of getting a laugh - whether it’s the truth or not - and I really felt like opening up a can of whoop-ass over that one but, instead, smiled serenely, then deducted a sticker from his chart when we returned home.

That’s a big deal to them. They’re now onto about their tenth snail chart (I’ve become a pro at drawing snails) and the sibling rivalry is game on! 

Now where was I? Oh yes, waxing lyrical about the joys of parenthood. There’s those golden moments of silence like I’m experiencing right now, which ultimately means your children are drawing on, (wiping poo up the walls), cutting, destroying or eating something they’re not supposed to. Probably better referred to as “borrowed time” because you know you’re going to have to pick up the pieces later on.
Actually, this silence has drawn out too long – something’s up. I’m outta here.

One of the twins favourite past-times
when they were younger was looking
at their photo albums ... and tearing
them up!